EU EU calls for
the fingerprinting of 6-year-old children7.4.16
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| TweetOn Wednesday the European Commission
set out its plans to expand EU and national databases "to
allow effective management of migration and to contribute to
internal security." One of the myriad ways this could be
done is by "collecting fingerprints of children between
the age of 6 and 12 years old" who enter the EU on short-stay
visas.

Lowering the age for the
fingerprinting of children for travel documents has been on the
cards since 2009 legislation that called for a study to investigate
the possibility of fingerprinting children under the age of 12
and "if necessary" provide "a proposal to amend
the age limit." [1]

The study, conducted by
the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and published
in 2013, concluded that: "under appropriate conditions,
fingerprint recognition of children aged between 6 and 12 years
is achievable with a satisfactory level of accuracy." [2]

The JRC report does not
contain an explicit recommendation, but the Commission notes
the Centre's "technically feasible" findings in the
new proposal and states that there will be "robust Fundamental
Rights safeguards and protection measures". The Commission
does not expand any further on this point.

The VIS contains a record
of all successful and rejected applicants for EU short-stay visas
and has a total capacity of some 70 million records, which are
held for five years from the date of expiry (for approved visas),
rejection or modification. Up to August 2013 it had been used
to process over 3.2 million (3,204,441) applications for short-stay
visas that included fingerprints. The proportion of those that
belonged to children - that is, those under 18 - is unknown.

Some EU states are already
ahead of the game: the UK already takes fingerprints from children
as young as five as part of the visa process. Previous discussions
within the Council have demonstrated the variety of rules across
the EU. The Czech Republic noted in 2006 that it takes fingerprints
for visas and residence permits from the age of five and a facial
image "from birth", while Spain said it took both biometrics
"from birth". [3]Background and further
reading

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